Tag Archives: President

Turkish President Abdullah Gul says Ankara will not allow the US to use NATO bases in Turkey for military purposes against other countries.

In an exclusive interview with Press TV in Tehran on Tuesday, Gul said every military facility in Turkey is under the control of Turkish commanders, noting that “without our knowledge, nothing can happen there.”

Gul arrived in Tehran on Sunday heading a high-ranking 135-member delegation upon the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Gul also said Turkey supports Iran’s nuclear rights and would play a constructive role in Iran’s nuclear program in the future.

“We want to see this dispute solved in a peaceful way… through diplomacy and dialogue,” he said.

The US and its allies accuse Iran of developing a military nuclear program. In June 2009, the UN Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s financial and military sectors under Western pressure.

Iranian officials have repeatedly refuted the charges, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran has the right to use peaceful nuclear technology.

The Turkish president’s interview with Press TV will be broadcast on February 16 at 20:35 GMT and rerun on February 17 at 01:35GMT, 06:35GMT and 14:35GMT.

Egyptian state television reported that President Hosni Mubarak and his wife left their home in an affluent Cairo suburb Friday, as hundreds of thousands of citizens across the country gathered to demand his ouster.

The televised statement did not say where Mubarak was headed, but the Associated Press, citing a local official, reported that he was going to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik.

The apparent departure came hours after Egypt’s military chiefs pledged to back the Mubarak’s decision to remain in office, but cede some powers to his hand-picked vice president, Omar Suleiman. The supreme military council said it would guarantee “free and honest” elections after Mubarak’s term expires, and a lifting of Egypt’s 30-year-old state of emergency once calm returned to the streets. The military encouraged protesters to go home, citing the need to “return to normal life.”

Instead, throngs of people gathered cities across the country, and anger and frustration mounted as word spread of the military’s stance. “Mubarak must go! He is finished!” protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square shouted as a sea of people waved red-white-and-black Egyptian flags.

The armed forces did not move against the demonstrators.

At the state Television and Radio Tower, which is north of the square and flanks the east bank of the Nile, thousands of protesters toppled makeshift barricades erected by the military and swarmed around the building.

Soldiers stood by and watched. For the moment, protesters did not force entry into the building, instead chanting: “this is the people’s army, not Mubarak’s army.” The television channel, a reliable producer of propaganda for Mubarak, continued to broadcast.

On the Mediterranean coast, massive crowds packed public squares in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, jeering Mubarak and insisting that he resign. Protests also erupted in Suez, where crowds surrounded 10 government buildings, according to the Egyptian news Web site al-Ahram Online. Large demonstrations were also reported in the cities of Tanta, Mahalla and Assuit.

In the affluent Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, a smaller demonstration was underway at Mubarak’s presidential palace. There, 26-year-old Taha Nahas predicted that the military’s statement would backfire and that Egyptians who had seen the armed forces as an honest protector of their interests would change their minds. “This is what we’ve heard before from Mubarak and Omar Suleiman,” Nahas said. “We have lost our trust in the military. It’s a corrupt organization.”

A group of counter-demonstrators congregated nearby, chanting support for the president and urging the other side to disperse. Soldiers kept the two sides separated. “We are afraid. If there is anarchy, looters will come to our homes,” said Serge Simon, 60, an Armenian-Egyptian pianist from Heliopolis. “What we are seeing here is hooliganism.”

In Tahrir Square, scores of thousands prostrated themselves to the muezzin’s prayer call at midday, many of them weeping. Organizers of Egypt’s popular rebellion predicted the biggest turnout so far in their 18-day revolt.

President Obama must decide now how he wants to govern in the two years leading up to the 2012 presidential election.

In recent days, he has offered differing visions of how he might approach the country’s problems. At one point, he spoke of the need for “mid-course corrections.” At another, he expressed a desire to take ideas from both sides of the aisle. And before this month’s midterm elections, he said he believed that the next two years would involve “hand-to-hand combat” with Republicans, whom he also referred to as “enemies.”

It is clear that the president is still trying to reach a resolution in his own mind as to what he should do and how he should do it.

This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.

If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.

We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

The best way for him to address both our national challenges and the serious threats to his credibility and stature is to make clear that, for the next two years, he will focus exclusively on the problems we face as Americans, rather than the politics of the moment – or of the 2012 campaign.

Quite simply, given our political divisions and economic problems, governing and campaigning have become incompatible. Obama can and should dispense with the pollsters, the advisers, the consultants and the strategists who dissect all decisions and judgments in terms of their impact on the president’s political prospects.

Obama himself once said to Diane Sawyer: “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” He now has the chance to deliver on that idea.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama spoke repeatedly of his desire to end the red-state-blue-state divisions in America and to change the way Washington works. This was a central reason he was elected; such aspirations struck a deep chord with the polarized electorate.

Obama can restore the promise of the election by forging a government of national unity, welcoming business leaders, Republicans and independents into the fold. But if he is to bring Democrats and Republicans together, the president cannot be seen as an advocate of a particular party, but as somebody who stands above politics, seeking to forge consensus. And yes, the United States will need nothing short of consensus if we are to reduce the deficit and get spending under control, to name but one issue.View Source Article

As President Obama meets with global colleagues at the G-20 summit in Seoul, South Korea, he is taking heat for the Fed’s decision to pump $600 billion into the American economy — from Germany’s finance minister to Sarah Palin.

As writer Judy Bachrach reports in World Affairs, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega likened the Fed policy to “throwing money out of a helicopter.”

And German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said the policy is no better than Chinese efforts to keep its currency artificially low: “What the U.S. accuses China of doing, the USA is doing by different means.”

Palin, meanwhile, wonders if Obama is trying to encourage inflation. “A little inflation goes a long way towards driving down the value of the enormous national debt Obama has run up,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

For his part, Obama pointed out the Federal Reserve Board is an independent body, and “doesn’t take orders from the White House.’

Obama hasn’t criticized the Fed’s move:

It’s not our habit to comment on actions by the Federal Reserve. But as president of the United States, I can tell you that my instructions to my team, including (Treasury) Secretary (Timothy) Geithner is to focus every single day on how we can grow our economy, how we can increase exports, how we can make sure that even as we’re buying goods from places like South Korea we’re also selling goods to places like South Korea.

Hypocritical, unprincipled Democrats are re-thinking that whole “get rid of the filibuster” deal–just in time to get their as#$%* kicked.

And for some reason, this story irritates me the worst. The moderates, independents, libertarians, RINOs, and trend-followers (but I repeat myself) who voted for Barack Obama are wiggling around like live bugs pinned to card-board. The latest entre is from someone I respect, but her latest post is really hard to take. Megan McArdle absolves President Obama saying, essentially, that there’s nothing he can do or could have done to help the economy. Au contraire. Nothing is something he could have done and would have better than what he did do.

Instead, the great meddler, the Man Who Knows Everything, well, he’s made everything worse. And it is going to get worse. You do not rape the private sector, leaving her terrified and shivering in the corner, and expect her to enjoy the company of men again and start cranking out babies any time soon. The private sector is paralyzed. They see taxation looming and cower. They see huge new commitments to workers and tremble. And that was the President’s doing. His. And the leftist loons in Congress. But hey, credit where credit is due.

Say it with me lefties and weak middle of the roaders: It’s Obama’s Fault. Get used to it, because his actions are going to harm us for a long time.

Oh, I was going to end with that, but the new day is young and it looks to be craptastic.

Oh, and Ken Mehlman is gay. Big Deal! Everyone already knew that. I don’t care. WHO DOES? Why the liberals this elite clown is helping, that’s who cares. So another Republican know-better-than-you-elitist-inside-the-beltway-smartypants jerk is going to help create a wedge issue for his own party. This has nothing to do with who he’s screwing–wait yes it does. He’s screwing his party and the base. Well done.

Finally, and only because I’m exhausted, David “Genius” Broder gives John McCain advice about how to screw his party lead (via @Allahpundit of HotAir). As IF John McCain needs any advice about that.

“Unsustainable” is a scary word that recently entered political discourse, coming authoritatively from Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf. Unsustainability is the operative moniker for Barack Obama’s massive deficit spending, which Elmendorf said “cannot be solved through minor tinkering.”

The CBO predicts an increase in our public debt from $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion at the end of 2020 if Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget is implemented. As a percentage of gross domestic product, the debt will rise from 53 percent to 90 percent.

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) sharpened the focus by asking the CBO Director: “What’s going to be necessary [is] either a 25 percent increase in taxes or a 20 percent reduction in spending, or some combination thereof. Is that correct?” Elmendorf replied “yes.”

Americans are beginning to wonder if Greece is the picture of America’s future. But we need look no further than the place where Obama and his team were trained in community organizing and bully tactics to redistribute the wealth: Illinois.

Illinois was the stomping ground for years for Obama, his top advisers Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, and his appointees such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. After they promoted themselves to Washington to run the country, other Obama associates who didn’t make the cut continued to run Illinois into the ground as the Illinois unemployment rate jumped from less than 5 percent to nearly 11 percent.

For years, we thought California was the most fiscally irresponsible of all 50 states, but Illinois has now taken the lead. A lengthy news article in the New York Times was headlined: “Illinois Stops Paying Its Bills, but Can’t Stop Digging Hole.”

Under years of Democratic leadership, Illinois has refused to honor its obligations, cut its spending, or trim its shockingly large deficit, which at $12 billion per year approaches nearly half its annual budget. As a result, Illinois’ credit rating has been downgraded and it pays a massive amount in interest on its loans.

That’s like a family making $50,000 but spending $75,000 each year. Obviously, it won’t take long before such a family would lose everything it has.

The big-majority Democratic state legislature, defying Illinois’ balanced-budget law, has been passing deficit budgets for years. The new definition of a liberal is no longer tax-and-spend; it’s borrow-and-spend.

It’s no surprise that unemployment keep increasing, and the reason why the rate isn’t higher than we are told is that the government has stopped counting people who have given up looking for a job. Employers are not hiring because taxes and regulations are expected to rise.

Starting January 1, 28 million middle Americans will be socked with a massive Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) which Republicans had eliminated. That’s a “gotcha” which penalizes taxpayers in ways they never expect, adding big tax penalties based on an “alternative” way of calculating taxes due.

Upper-income Americans will see a big jump in their marginal tax rates. Their accountants are already telling them that the more they work, the less additional money they will take home, so they may be already slowing down, canceling investments, or retiring to draw Social Security.

Hardworking parents who are saving for their children’s future will be hit by the reinstatement of the massive “death tax” on January 1. They may wonder why they work hard and save if their money will go to Uncle Sam and to people who choose not to work.

Marriage penalties will hit couples hard, both in the income tax law and in Obamacare. Obama’s financial favoritism toward unmarried women, his second biggest voting bloc, has become common knowledge.

Those who choose to control their own health care through Health Savings Accounts will be slapped with new taxes. That’s just one more way to promote Obama’s goal of moving all health care to government control.

Employers are not hiring because they know they will soon be paying not only higher taxes but also more health care costs or penalties. Depreciation allowances for investment in equipment will be lowered from $250,000 to $25,000, which means businesses will do less investing.

Our ability to compete in the marketplace, of course, depends on our advanced research and development. New taxes will hit R&D hard, which means more slowdowns and more outsourcing overseas.

The expiration of the Republican tax cuts will impose the largest tax hikes in history, affecting all taxpayers. The nearly 50 percent who pay no taxes will also be hurt by more loss of jobs.

There is only one antidote for these depressing prognostications. On November 2, American voters will have the chance to choose real change from Obama’s failed Illinois borrow-and-spend policies by electing Republicans who commit to extend the expiring tax cuts.